Notes From the Resistance Feb. 9, 2017

Here are excerpts from the letter Coretta Scott King wrote years ago and which Mitch McConnell and other Republicans stopped Elizabeth Warren from reading aloud at the Senate yesterday. (The letter, from the 1980s, is regarding the firm belief from Mrs. King that Jeff Sessions’s history of aggression toward black voters should block any attempt to reward him with a federal appointment.)

Shutting Senator Warren down was a breathtaking act of cowardice, hostility and abuse of power. The GOP will eventually figure out that they are doing little more than fanning the flames of liberal rage — and will feel the consequences. Until then, the letter the Massachusetts Senator was kept from reading aloud should be shared across any and all platforms. Jeff Sessions is unqualified to represent us at Justice; saying so isn’t just Senator Warren’s right, it is a moral imperative.

From Mrs. King:

“Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts,” King wrote in the cover page of her nine-page letter opposing Sessions’s nomination, which failed. “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship.”

King writes that Sessions’s ascension to the federal bench “simply cannot be allowed to happen,” arguing that as a U.S. attorney, the Alabama lawmaker pursued “politically-motivated voting fraud prosecutions” and that he “lacks the temperament, fairness and judgment to be a federal judge.” Sessions’s conduct in prosecuting civil rights leaders in a voting-fraud case “raises serious questions about his commitment to the protection of the voting rights of all American citizens.”

“The irony of Mr. Sessions’ nomination is that, if confirmed, he will be given a life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods,” she wrote, later adding, “I believe his confirmation would have a devastating effect on not only the judicial system in Alabama, but also on the progress we have made toward fulfilling my husband’s dream.”